Page 5 of The Invisible Roommate

“I’m not an Ipinger by birth,” she said. “I married into the island. Into the house. I grew up in New York City. But I’m sure I’ve bored you already. Do you like the room?”

Gerard had stayed at the Ritz and the Plaza, traveled to Paris and Milan. No matter how deep he dug, he didn’t think he could “like” this messy room in a creaking, crumbling house on the shore of a remote island, but after negotiating a monthly rent that even he found exceedingly low in the current economy, he couldn’t pass it up.

“What should I do with all this stuff?” he asked, eyeing the space warily.

“Clean it out or live around it, I suppose,” she said with a shrug.

“It’s not … evidence, is it?” he asked.

“The only thing this is evidence of, I fear, is a misanthrope being run off due to a misunderstanding.” A sadness percolated through her time-worn features before she left him. He was surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of scientific instruments he didn’t know the names of and textbooks he could never understand. It would take him all day to remove this stuff. Had he made a mistake running away?

No, he couldn’t think of that now. He’d done it. And the sooner he got this done, the sooner he could face flop onto that questionable mattress in the alcove of windows and sink into deep, deep sleep. The kind of sleep he had been promised over a year ago. He shuddered with indignity before grabbing garbage bags and cleaning gloves from under the sink.

With his earbuds in, he got to work.

The liquids went down the drain. The solids went in the bags. And the unidentifiable substances were sorted separately by how messy or dangerous they appeared to be.

Box by box, he carted the gadgets and measuring implements down to the curb, sweat staining the underarms of his gray T-shirt. Regina had mentioned trash pickup was in the morning, so he didn’t need to worry about all this junk festering for long and creating rings on the grass.

Once the big items were gone, he tackled the papers. So many papers. Some in notebooks. Some loose. All with chicken scratch on them. At first, he thought they were scrawled in an invented language, but then known words and figures popped out at him. Italian phrases. Backward numbers. Convoluted punctuation. At one point, he took a notebook that said FROM THE DESK OF EMORY GRIFFIN into the bathroom and held it up to the mirror thinking he could Da Vinci Code the scribbled ramblings, but he had no luck.

Was this a puzzle? A cry for help? Should Regina have given this all to the police?

Though, from what he knew of this island, it was more of a one-guy operation. Only a sergeant, if that.

As he inspected the book, he got the distinct, uncanny impression he wasn’t alone. When his profile started to rise, he’d honed a sixth sense that alerted him to the hawkish presence of another person when traversing the empty streets of a new city or returning to his apartment late at night. His ears would perk up, the back of his neck would tickle, and his mind would supply the age-old question, Friend or foe?

But he looked every which way and saw nothing, no one.

Odd. He slammed the notebook shut.

One notebook wasn’t going to bother him, so he stored it in the drawer of a desk pressed up against the wall in case the previous tenant ever returned. Whatever was in there seemed important.

The kitchen items he left mostly untouched. There was no use wasting a perfectly good pan or plate.

The mahogany wardrobe was full of clothes, none of which were on hangers. Dress shirts were balled up and wrinkled. In the back corner, there was a heather-gray sweatshirt that said UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MEDICINE & HEALTH SCIENCES on it. He’d heard of it and tried to place the campus on a map in his mind—North Carolina, maybe?—but ultimately threw the sweatshirt in the trash despite it having a strangely alluring smell of burnt wood and banana clutched in the weft of its overwashed cotton.

In the drawers, he found socks and boxer briefs of varying degrees of wear. Even with gloves, he couldn’t stomach touching them. He took the scratched-up tongs from the kitchen and disposed of the undergarments and then the tongs, too, for good measure.

Regina was delighted to lend him some cleaning supplies. As the hum of the vacuum overpowered the whoosh of the bay and whistling winds beyond the window, he attempted to conjure up the last time he’d cleaned for himself. Five years ago? Six?

Whatever the answer, he made up for it that day by scrubbing and wiping down everything in sight.

At some point, he stood on the sturdiest dining chair and ran the long-armed duster across the top of the newly empty wardrobe. A cumulus cloud of dust rained down around him. From nearby, an achoo pierced the air.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

Goose bumps pricked up on his skin. His head snapped toward the sound and his balance wavered. He clung to the wardrobe for support as he popped out an earbud. Where had that humanlike sound come from?

A second unexpected noise broke through the quiet. It was the familiar yet solemn plunk of piano keys. He took out the second earbud to fully listen.

Regina or a guest of hers played a tune down below, and the captivating melody trickled in through the vents in the floor. The pianist must’ve been the one who sneezed, and he made a mental note that these vents carried sound almost too well.

The piece of music wasn’t anything classical, nor was it something Gerard remembered from the church. It sounded contemporary, borderline somber. The chords had haunting reverberations that implanted in Gerard’s chest and made him feel both uneasy and at home.

While he listened, a sourceless breeze crested along the outside of his exposed arm. He turned his head. The windows weren’t open. The air-conditioning unit across the room was off. He peered up at the ceiling and concluded that there had to be a draft. Old houses, and all that.

But still, he scratched at the back of his neck, unable to shake the sensation that he was being watched. He wasn’t usually wrong about a thing like that.